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The Supermarket Sisterhood

By Devon Williamson & directed by Ross Jordan

Dates: 27th July – 5th August 2017

All is not well at Discount Co. The suburban supermarket has seen better days and, ominously, the long-time owner has just sold out to a bean-counting accountant who has fresh ideas on how to turn a profit. It is all going to have a serious impact on the lives of the checkout chicks – doyenne Barbara, the neurotic Michelle, and Indian migrant Aisha.

When the new owner – who is only ever heard intoning instructions to staff in a dull monotone over the store intercom in the menacing style of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984 – decides to install automatic self-service tills, the checkout chicks declare war in a desperate bid to save their threatened jobs. Complicating the picture are the customers, among them former owner Jim Everson, the love-struck Brian, boisterous twin terrors Susan and Sharon, as well as Michelle’s boyfriend from the meat department, Rob.

Poor Barbara cannot imagine life outside Discount Co, having worked there for 35 years – “I am the original checkout chick,” she tells us – so when her cunning plan to engage “Sven” to undermine the new “robots” turns to disaster, she comes up with an even more drastic solution. But even she cannot foresee the twists that fate has in store.